Saturday, October 04, 2008

One team from each pot will be allocated to each of the eight groups during the draw, which will take place at UEFA headquarters in Nyon from 12.00CET on Tuesday. The 40 participants will form eight groups of five, with each side playing two home and two away matches. Clubs from the same national association will not be drawn in the same group.

We have been placed in Pot 3 (details of all groups here) for the group stages of the competition which takes place on five matchdays between 23 Oct - 18 Dec 2008, which as Jack pointed out is set to lead to some fixture congestion in November.

Despite being derided in the past, this years competition looks to be the strongest for some time with a number of strong teams through to the group stages (not to mention already knocked out) that wouldn't look out of place in this season's Champions League.

Pot 1 looks particularly strong, whilst it is a boost that we are placed in pot 3 - rather than pot 4 like Aston Villa or Portsmouth. There doesn't look to much difference between pot 2 or 3, but then is a drop off to the last two pots.

I'm not sure of how the fixtures will pan out in terms of away and home games, but given that the top three progress I would say that the fixtures we have at home will be of paramount importance in terms of qualifying.